Search

This paper offers a corpus-based investigation of the diachronic evolution of the Dutch modal verbs zullen 'shall/will' and willen 'want'. Although they show considerable differences in their developments, neither of these verbs participates in the marked tendency to regain grammatical autonomy characterizing the 'central' modals kunnen 'can', mogen 'may', moeten 'must' and hoeven 'need'. While the latter verbs from New Dutch onwards occur increasingly often without an additional main verb in the clause, this evolution is largely absent in zullen and willen. The paper attempts to offer an explanation on the basis of the developments in the semantic profile of the modal verbs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syntactic theories are typically construed based on acceptability judgments. These judgments are increasingly often collected experimentally, testing larger sets of linguistically naive participants. An important assumption is that participants have a very clear understanding of what it is they are asked to do, which can be assessed by establishing their internal consistency. The question we address in this paper is whether 'human measuring instruments' are consistent in their judgments. To this end, we re-examined the judgment data from Schoenmakers (2023), where three types of violations of the prescriptive norm and object scrambling sentences were evaluated. We used Generalizability Theory to investigate the degree of covariation in the judgments and found that the internal consistency was poor in the norm violation item sets, but excellent in the scrambling item set. A difference between the data patterns is that the former item sets led to 'sledgehammer' effects between the stigmatized and non-stigmatized variants, which left little room for participant variation. Our analyses show that judgments from naive native speakers can adequately serve linguistic theorizing, both in the case of stigmatized and non-stigmatized variation. Furthermore, we performed cluster analyses to identify subgroups of participants to get a better grasp on the variation in the data set. We conclude that specific statistical analyses can help understand data and advance linguistic theory building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjectives and Adjective Phrases (A&AP) is the first, preliminary, result of the larger project A Modern Grammar of Dutch. The goal of this project is to provide a grammar of Dutch for the professional linguist that incorporates the results of modern theoretical syntactic research in such a way that it is accessible for linguists of all frameworks and disciplines. This article evaluates A&AP in the light of the above goal. It contains a description of the many things that the theoretical perspective of A&AP adds to the knowledge found in traditional grammars such as the Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst (ANS). In addition, it discusses some problems related to the theoretical perspective and makes a number of suggestions to solve these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general linguistics, a paucal is a specific construction that only allows for insertion of the lowest numerals (num), e.g. the Russian num + N.gen.sg, which only allows the numerals 2-4 (Pesetsky 2009). In this paper it is argued that also Dutch shows paucal effects in at least three constructions with numerals: (i) the alle + num + de + N construction, (ii) the num + diminutive construction, and (iii) the historical num + genitive construction. The third paucal construction, which is related to the modern quantitative er construction, which lacks the paucal effect, takes us to the origins and nature of the paucal. Following traditional grammarians who assume a connection of quantitative er with the genitive ending -er (Bech 1952; van der Horst 2009), we are led to the conclusion that extraction of the genitive morpheme to the verbal domain cancels the paucal effect. This brings us to an interpretive rule of paucality that an inflected num at the surface triggers the paucal restriction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to revisit the Dutch Binominal Expressive Construction (cf. een schat van een kind) through an extensive corpus study and to explore its comparability with a potential morphological counterpart in the form of a [N1 N2]N2 compound. We focus on four positively-connotated N1s, namely schat 'treasure', droom 'dream', pracht 'splendor, beauty' and wonder 'miracle', three of which occur in both the syntactic and the morphological pattern (e.g. een schat van een kind 'lit. a treasure of a child' / *een schatkind 'lit. a treasure child', een droom van een huis 'a dream of a house' / een droomhuis 'a dream house', een pracht van een dochter 'a beauty of a daughter' / een prachtdochter 'lit. a beauty daughter', een wonder van vrouw 'a wonder of a woman' / een wondervrouw 'a wonder woman'). The differences and similarities between the various patterns are determined through a corpus analysis of their semantic and formal properties, as well as their frequency and productivity. On the theoretical level, the case study will allow us to address the question whether the syntactic and morphological patterns are complementary or in competition with each other. We will show that some subpatterns form good alternates (e.g. [een pracht van een N2] vs. [een pracht-N2]), while others are used in quite divergent ways ([een droom van een N2] vs. [een droom-N2]). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that the oblique argument of the Dutch two-place predicate wachten 'wait' behaves syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically as a subject. Conversely, its morphological subject behaves as an object. The starting point of this study is an instance of conjunction reduction in the Flemish newspaper De Standaard, in which the oblique argument of wachten is left unexpressed on identity with the nominative subject in the first conjunct, thereby affirming its status as a subject. Five additional subjecthood tests lend further support to this claim. They show that the oblique argument of wachten is strongly associated with the first position in declarative clauses, that it systematically inverts with the conjugated verb, and that it is often pronominal, definite, and nearly always animate. The data for this study have been randomly extracted from the nlTenTen20 corpus (Kilgarriff et al. 2004, 2014). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to offer a typology of Dutch insubordinate infinitives, which, following Evans's (2007) definition of insubordination, are defined as 'the main clause use' of infinitival constructions. The main objectives of this paper are to provide a pragmatic analysis of these constructions in Dutch and, through cross-linguistic comparison, investigate whether their attested pragmatic functions correspond to the pragmatic functions of (a) insubordinate constructions in general and (b) insubordinate infinitives in particular. This is done on the basis of a corpus study, examining a sample of independent infinitival constructions attested in the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (CGN). Ultimately, three primary functions are distinguished for Dutch insubordinate infinitives that align with different types of insubordinate constructions attested cross-linguistically: they can be employed for (i) discursive strategies, (ii) interpersonal control, and (iii) evaluation and exclamation. In addition, through processes of insubordination and idiomatization a new type of output is created in which the insubordinate infinitival constructions behave as discourse markers. In adopting a language-specific, corpus-based approach, this study provides a first systematic and comprehensive functional typology of insubordinate infinitival constructions in Dutch. At the same time, it contributes to the ongoing theoretical debate on the functional load of insubordinate constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dutch has three seem-type verbs (schijnen, lijken, blijken), which behave in clearly different ways, although they can all be regarded as epistemicevidential markers in some of their uses. This paper addresses the semantic contribution of blijken, its morpho-syntactic variability and the possible link between both. The analysis is based on data taken from the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (CGN). One of the main findings of this paper pertains to the fact that blijken not only has (typically intersubjective) epistemic-evidential meaning, but also expresses mirativity, especially in those constructional patterns in which the qualification expressed by the verb is non-focal (and hence has only secondary information status). The corpus data show that such non-focal uses of blijken can occur in every construction type the verb occurs in, but clearly favour inherently non-focalizing syntactic patterns like the auxiliary use of blijken with a te-infinitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructions in which the verb combines with a fixed preposition in many cases have a verb taking a prepositional object (PO). It is often said that the preposition with a PO is very close to meaningless, and therefore arbitrary, but there are reasons to doubt this assertion. This paper aims at exploring the paths followed by prepositional and constructional meaning towards abstraction. For a relevant sample of PO-prepositions, it turns out to be possible to reconstruct the path that connects it to its literal sense, even synchronically. Important gateways to abstraction turn out to be the use of analogy and the shift from literal to figurative meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the merits of Dirk Geeraerts in the field of lexicology, lexicography and lexical semantics. The article highlights some of the major achievements and insights in the field developed by Geeraerts. From the very first beginning of his research and the publication of his PhD, his work at the Institute for Dutch Lexicology up to the development of his academic career at KU Leuven, Geeraerts' research focus is on the lexicon. The paper highlights how this research was born out of, and nurtured by, an ongoing dialectic between the practice of lexicography and the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we aim to explain and illustrate the theory of Distributed Morphology for non-specialists. The goal is to take away any misunderstandings and to provide some illustrations of the workings of the theory, mainly on the basis of data from Dutch. Distributed Morphology is a theory of morphology that embraces the so-called Separation Hypothesis: derivation – the forming of a new word by some abstract operation – is separated from affixation – the realization or spell-out of the abstract operation by the addition of some phonologically specified element. The means used by DM to implement the Separation Hypothesis is by late (after syntax) insertion of affixes. Furthermore, Distributed Morphology claims that there is no separate component of the grammar where word-formation takes place. The operations that form new words are the same operations that may create syntactic phrases. Starting from these fundamental claims, we go into some detail of the way Distributed Morphology accounts for different morphological patterns. The paper also points at some cognate, but alternative, approaches to word-formation and inflection. In particular, we briefly address Borer's so-called exo-skeletal model, and the nanosyntactic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to review recent research illustrating the importance of prosody in foreign language acquisition, and to examine whether music might help in this learning process. The paper starts off by defining prosody and by examining previous research on foreign language prosody acquisition, stating the difficulties for learners and the potential effect of non-native prosody on communication, notably on comprehensibility, intelligibility and accentedness. A subsequent section focuses on prosodic characteristics of Dutch and the problems foreign language learners may encounter in acquiring them. Based on this general description of foreign language prosody acquisition, the paper then zooms in on the link between music and prosody, and on the potential effect of musical training, musical abilities or the use of music in the foreign language classroom on foreign language prosody acquisition. The paper ends with a short discussion on avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the variable placement of the particle of particle verb constructions in Dutch and German. In particular, the option to place the particle in first sentence position is studied in a judgment task. We asked native speakers of Dutch to judge utterances which differ with respect to the semantic transparency of the particle and with respect to the distance between particle and verb. In spite of an overall awkwardness of constructions with a fronted particle, the factors under investigation turned out to influence their well-formedness. Our observations thus raise some questions about the acceptability and the grammaticality status of such dubious structures. When comparing our results to those found by Trotzke et al. (2015), who did a similar study for German, we find that the patterns in the two languages are similar but that there are nonetheless some important differences to note. We suggest that this discrepancy has to do with the more flexible use of the first sentence position in German. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many languages use verbs of perception to express evidentiality. This paper studies the evidential use of the object-oriented perception verb eruitzien 'look' in Dutch. The results of a Twitter corpus study show that, whereas ziet eruit alsof 'looks as if' occasionally comes with an evidential interpretation, the construction ziet ernaar uit 'looks like' predominantly expresses inferential evidentiality. A diachronic investigation shows how the evidential reading of this construction developed from the object-oriented use of the verb, through a stage in which the construction is used to mark a prediction. This predictive reading, which is still available in present-day Dutch, is not evidential. It does not indicate a speaker has supporting evidence for a factual claim, but rather they have evidence for something they expect to become a fact in the near future. Our diachronic study also reveals how another construction, with a subject-oriented verb (eruit) zien 'see (from it)', once used to be an expression of inferential evidentiality as well. This particular construction appears to have lost the competition to its object-oriented counterpart ziet ernaar uit 'looks like', as it is no longer attested. We argue that the construction ziet ernaar uit 'looks like' has fully developed into an evidential construction, since its current primary function is to express evidentiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces three articles which each highlight a specific aspect of Dirk Geeraerts' research in the field of Dutch linguistics. At the same time, some general observations are made regarding Geeraerts' theoretical, methodological, and organizational contribution to linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the merits of Dirk Geeraerts in the field of (diachronic) lexical semantics. The article highlights Geeraerts' work on prototypes and metaphor. Some of Geeraerts' most illuminating case-studies are reviewed and a number of characteristic features of this part of Geeraerts' work are identified and presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of a construction that has not been studied extensively yet, namely the Dutch beter-construction, as in Beter ga je bij Starbucks koffie halen, 'You better get yourself a coffee at Starbucks'. The paper gives a detailed description of the syntactic structure and the pragmatics of the construction. We argue that the sentence-initial adverb beter in the beter-construction differs, in both meaning and distributional characteristics, from the comparative adverb beter. By conducting three tests based on Broekhuis & Corver (2016), we show that it functions as a clause adverb in contrast to comparative beter, which functions as a VP-adverb. Moreover, we show that the adverb beter in the beter-construction shares important properties with modal and subjective adverbs. Adopting the generative-linguistic approach to clausal structure, we further propose that modal beter is a phrase that undergoes movement from a sentence-internal modifier position to the clause-initial position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A subject what needs research. Revisiting DeSchutter & Kloots 2000 De Schutter & Kloots (2000) present an explorative analysis of the use of relative pronouns and relative adverbs in seventeenth-century literary Dutch, when w-forms are gradually replacing d-forms. They argue that the incoming w-forms were informal compared to the older d-forms. In the present paper, however, it is argued that recent historical-sociolinguistic research suggests that the new w-forms represented a change from above, and thus did not index informality. More research into changes in relativization is needed, and some suggestions for future research are given at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a pattern in which a finite verb is preceded by a locative PP which combines with an initial or final occurrence of the adverb dan ('then') and which may look like a violation of the V2 constraint. The paper is relevant in the context of how to handle what look like exceptions to the V2 pattern, a point that is sometimes neglected in the formal literature, though Zwart (2008a) draws attention to the importance of also capturing such recalcitrant data. Based on standard arguments for constituency, it will be shown that the adverb, which has a non-temporal reading, and the associated PP form one constituent. Thus, a pattern that might at first appear to be a violation of V2 in fact is shown to be in line with the constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acquisition of [PART+AUX] and [AUX+PART] word order in Flanders. A descriptive, methodological and theoretical addition toMeyer & Weerman (2016) This paper presents new data on the acquisition of verb clusters in Flemish children. The data were collected by means of a sentence repetition task and the results are in line with the development path for verb clusters in Dutch children as proposed by Meyer & Weerman (2016). While Flemish children also show a development from more 2-1 orders in the youngest group to more 1-2 orders in the older group, this development seems to happen more slowly in Flemish children than in Dutch children. In spite of the fact that the results of both the Flemish and the Dutch study refute an analysis that takes the input adult language as the main factor in verb cluster formation in children, the Flemish data suggest that the higher frequency of 2-1 orders in the Flemish context could help to explain why 1-2 orders are acquired more slowly in Flemish children than Dutch children. In addition, this paper also discusses the results of a production test in Flanders that shows a high preference for 2-1 orders until the age of 7, thus questioning the type of linguistic skills that are assessed in a sentence repetition task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequency and arm-chair linguistics. A Frisian linguist looks back on Dutch Linguistics and on himself In this contribution I focus on a paper written by Maarten Lemmens on progressive constructions, which appeared in Dutch Linguistics (2015). This paper illustrates the usefulness of frequency in linguistic research convincingly. Additionally I discuss the tension within generative grammar between vision on the one hand and a methodologically adequate treatment of data on the other hand. Finally, I look back on my own activities as a linguist, presenting some personal thoughts about the question what the usefulness is of mediocrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dutch van is used to mark emotions and feelings which cause bodily reactions and mental states in combinations such as rillen van angst 'shiver with fear', sprakeloos van verbazing 'speechless with astonishment' and blaken van zelfvertrouwen 'beam with self-confidence'. The classification of emotions along the four dimensions of evaluation (valence), potency (control), activation (arousal) and (un)predictability of Fontaine (2006) is discussed and shown to be of linguistic interest. Predicates such as stralen 'beam' or het uitschreeuwen 'to cry (it) out' have strong collocation relations with words denoting emotional extremes on one of the four axes, such as high valence or high arousal. While most of the paper is devoted to the construction with causative van, some suggestive evidence from adverbs of degree is offered to make a broader case for the usefulness of the four dimensions in linguistic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of the generative-linguistic study of Dutch syntax over the last five decades. This is done from three perspectives: a quantitative perspective, a theoretical perspective, and a case study perspective, specifically the case of manner-adverbial patterns of the type A+P; for example, hardop 'aloud'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I reanalyze the data provided in Barbiers (2018) on Dutch adverbs which occur in an embedded (complement) clause while they semantically pertain to the matrix (main) clause (or vice versa). Whereas Barbiers analyzes adverb placement in Dutch along the lines of the Cinque hierarchy (Cinque 1999), I will propose an analysis and explanation along semantic lines which does not need any movement, thereby stressing the importance of semantics and pragmatics in syntactic analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the online spread of non-standard Dutch in an unexplored communicative setting, i.e. complaint management on corporate Facebook pages. Based on a self-compiled corpus of consumer-company interactions taken from 6 corporate Facebook pages, we investigate to what extent typical features of informal social media communication spill over into more sensitive contexts of complaint management. We do so by mapping the presence and frequency of 27 Flemish old vernacular and 13 new vernacular features (cf. Androutsopoulos 2011) in consumer-initiated posts, company replies and consumer-to-consumer interactions. The results show that some, though not all, new vernacular features occur relatively frequently in both consumer and company messages. Consumers predominantly use new vernacular features for expressive compensation, while companies appear to incorporate them in their webcare (especially emoji and English insertions) as functional operationalisations of conversational human voice (Kelleher 2009) and to support their desired brand identity. In contrast, old vernacular features rarely occur in the dataset. This suggests a different status of old and new vernacular features, where the former are deemed less appropriate or more limited in terms of functionality in this communicative setting. Despite the often informal register of the consumer messages, Standard Dutch still seems the preferred or safer option for company-addressed posts while companies, too, cling to Standard Dutch as the benchmark for professional written communication in this online context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses two binominal soort-constructions: twee typen subject 'two types of subject' and twee typen subjecten 'two types of subjects'. The choice between singular or plural subject(en) is contextually determined and reflects a difference in meaning of the second noun. The combination of a plural first noun and a singular second count noun is infrequent, due to the special interpretation assigned to the singular noun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of growing mobility and migration flows, the number of non-native speakers of Dutch in Belgium and the Netherlands have gradually increased over the past decades and so have the number of people enrolled in Dutch as a Second Language education. While there is huge variation in the profiles of these non-native speakers, they almost exclusively have in common that their Dutch sounds, in some way and at some stage, accented. In line with worldwide trends in foreign language teaching, the pronunciation goal in Dutch as a Second Language education has shifted from native-like to intelligible. Indeed, the notion of intelligibility has become prominent in language teaching and assessment. In this paper, we discuss the complexity of this notion and set it off against related terms like 'comprehensibility' and 'foreign accent'. Through a literature review, we argue that intelligibility is an interactional and context-sensitive phenomenon: it is as much a responsibility of the speaker as it is of the listener or conversational partner(s) in general, whose attitudes will have an impact on the intelligibility and thus on the conversational flow and communicative success. After reviewing literature on the intelligibility of Dutch as a Second Language, we end by formulating some promising lines for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper presents a corpus-based analysis of a construction that has not been studied thoroughly yet, viz. the Dutch comparative correlative (e.g. hoe eerder, hoe beter het is; hoe eerder, des te beter het is 'the sooner, the better it is'). Contrary to previous literature, this paper gives a more comprehensive description of the form and use of the comparative correlative. It shows, for instance, that there is a notable preference for verb-final word order in the second part of the hoe... hoe... construction, while hoe... des te... seems compatible with both verb-second and verb-final word order. In addition, genre differences are attested, as well as differences between the Netherlands and Belgium, e.g. in the use of conjunctions within the construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explain the difference between the notions possessive dative and possessive accusative as used by me and other linguists like Vandeweghe (e.g. 1986 and 1987) and the notions dative and accusative inalienable possessors as used in Broekhuis et al. (2015). It is not so much the difference in the descriptive system I want to focus on, but the difference in aim. Broekhuis et al. want to specify the syntactic encoding of 'inalienable possession' and come to the conclusion that the possessor of the inalienable possession is always the referent of an indirect object, be it on different syntactic levels. I want to explain why this is the case. This can be done by showing that the complex predicates in inalienable possession constructions are comparable to the dative verbs in constructions with a regular indirect object, due to the fact that they contain a constituent referring to inalienable possession. Our descriptions have much in common and if we see them as complementary, they can profit from each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laboratory sentences in the era of quantitative linguistics This paper briefly compares an early (1996) and a later (2010) article that I published in Nederlandse Taalkunde, concentrating on the different methodologies underlying the two papers: A formal theoretical in-depth analysis of one idiolect in the first paper and a large-scale quantitative and theoretical approach in the second. It is argued that the two methods make different contributions and are both necessary to develop a theory of (im-)possible syntactic structures in natural language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses V3-patterns with a sentence-initial adverbial clause in Standard Dutch (StD) and West-Flemish (WF), which appear to violate the V2 restriction which normally regulates word order in these languages. V3- patterns occur in both languages; they can be interpreted as complying with the V2 constraint provided they are analyzed as the result of merging a regular root clause with V2 order with an extra-sentential adverbial clause. The paper shows that the distribution of V3-patterns is slightly wider in WF than in StD: StD requires that the root clause which combines with the extra-sentential constituent either exhibits subject-verb inversion (XP-V-S) or, in the case of subject initial V2 clauses, that the subject has a distinguished informationstructural status such as contrastive focus/topic; WF allows V3-structures more freely, regardless of whether they display subject-verb inversion and regardless of the informational-structural status of the subject. The analysis takes as its point of departure the earlier claim that V2-languages can be symmetric in the sense that the finite verb always leaves the TP domain and occupies the highest head position in the root clause, the complementizer position C in the traditional generative analysis, or asymmetric in the sense that the position of the finite verb varies in that it occupies the C-position when the root clause exhibits subject-verb inversion or a lower TP internal tense position (T) in root clauses without inversion. The hypothesis is that V3-patterns with a sentenceinitial adverbial clause are only possible if the initial adverbial clause attains a local relation with the finite verb, and that this requires the finite verb to be in the (higher) C-position. By assuming that StD is an asymmetric V2-language while WF is a symmetric V2-language the variation with respect to the distribution of V3-patterns in these languages can be captured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The acquisition of word stress in perspective This paper reflects on the acquisition of Dutch word stress reported in Nederlandse Taalkunde 1 (1996), where I argued that children systematically build up a grammar for word stress that fits a parameter framework without assuming innate knowledge. In the past 25 years this work has been praised and criticized because (a) the theoretical framework changed to Optimality Theory, (b) the proposed stages did not always adequately fit the data, and (c) new evidence from infant speech perception suggested that children know the word stress system before they start speaking. To fully understand how children acquire word stress, the next 25 year requires researchers from various disciplines to join forces to study representations and perception-production processes in tandem, the mechanisms that cause learning, and the interaction of word stress with other linguistic subdomains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconciling with the prepositional object. On the influence ofVandeweghe (2011) In this paper I argue for the positive aspects of the claim in Vandeweghe (2011) that there are two types of prepositional object: a primary and a secondary type, which have a different relationship to the predicate. The most discussed consequence of this theory is that it allows a simple sentence to contain two prepositional objects provided that they have a different hierarchical status. Here I focus on sentences with only one possible secondary prepositional object and no other objects. These sentences show that a fixed preposition is not a sufficient condition for a PP to be considered a secondary prepositional object; the preposition should also be used in a non-literal, abstract way. When it is difficult to decide whether this is the case, other semantic properties have to be taken into account, such as the reciprocal character of the predicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is still no dictionary of particles, although particle research is on-going This paper seeks to explain why there is (still) no comprehensive descriptive work of the particles of Dutch. It does so by focusing on a number of particles that appear to go against common wisdom concerning Dutch sentence structure, in particular V2-violations and wide scope particles that are deeply embedded in complex phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First-constituent-deletion in Dutch. What topic drop is and what it is not This paper discusses the phenomenon of pronoun deletion in Dutch. In the position before the finite verb a 3rd person pronoun may be deleted. The deletion of the pronoun is constrained by the recoverability condition, which requires that its referential features can be reconstructed from the context. It will be argued that only the deletion of a d(emonstrative)-pronoun is 'topic drop', which is typical for spoken Dutch. Deleted topic d-pronouns are subject to the same syntactic conditions as overt topic d-pronouns (Van Kampen 2010). Like the overt topic d-pronoun, the deleted d-pronoun refers to the focus constituent of the preceding sentence. A deleted p(ersonal)-pronoun, by contrast, does not have a uniquely determined antecedent and therefore it cannot be analyzed as discourse topic drop. In written texts, it solely maintains the preceding subject referent. I will further discuss the deletion of 1st person pronouns and the deletion of d-pronouns in imperatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expect the unexpected. About the different ways in which the Dutch and the Flemish use er In this paper I report experimental data I have ignored for almost ten years because I did not know what to do with them. I still don't know exactly, but the 25th anniversary of this journal is a key occasion to share them, if only because they fittingly illustrate that the syntax of Netherlandic and Belgian Dutch are diverging. The new data demonstrate that contrary to categorical Netherlandic intuitions that er is ungrammatical in sentences with a fronted locative (such as Op de envelop zat een postzegel), er is not only grammatical, but also beneficial to the Dutch language user. Compared to Belgian Dutch, however, the principal beneficiary of er's processing advantage no longer is the subject noun phrase, but anything that follows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we revisit earlier analyses of the distribution of er 'there' in adjunct-initial sentences to demonstrate the merits of computational upscaling in syntactic variation research. Contrary to previous studies, in which major semantic and pragmatic predictors (viz. adjunct type, adjunct concreteness, and verb specificity) had to be coded manually, the present study operationalizes these predictors on the basis of distributional analysis: instead of hand-coding for specific semantic classes, we determine the semantic class of the adjunct, verb, and subject automatically by clustering the lexemes in those slots on the basis of their 'semantic passport' (as established on the basis of their distributional behaviour in a reference corpus). These clusters are subsequently interpreted as proxies for semantic classes. In addition, the pragmatic factor 'subject predictability' is operationalized automatically on the basis of collocational attraction measures, as well as distributional similarity between the other slots and the subject. We demonstrate that the distribution of er can be modelled equally successfully with the automated approach as in manual annotation-based studies. Crucially, the new method replicates our earlier findings that the Netherlandic data are easier to model than the Belgian data, and that lexical collocations play a bigger role in the Netherlandic than in the Belgian data. On a methodological level, the proposed automatization opens up a window of opportunities. Most important is its scalability: it allows for a larger gamut of alternations that can be investigated in one study, and for much larger datasets to represent each alternation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belgian Dutch (BD) and Netherlandic Dutch (ND) are known to exhibit phonetic and lexical differences, but national variation in the syntax of Dutch has often been claimed to be quasi non-existent. This view is rooted in the fact that both laypersons and researchers are oblivious to national divergences in the grammar of Dutch (unless they are categorical and/or heavily mediatized), but also in the undisputed belief that BD and ND are different surface manifestations of 'the same grammatical motor'. As a result, only a few syntactic phenomena have hitherto been shown to be sensitive to national constraints. In this paper we illustrate a computational bottom-up approach (pioneered in Bannard & Callison-Burch 2005) to cast the net as widely as possible. Building on statistical machine translation and a parallel corpus of Dutch translations of English subtitles, we identify plausible mappings between English n-grams and their Dutch translations. We do this in order to obtain paraphrases, i.e., stretches of interchangeable Dutch text that carry approximately the same meaning. In a first case study, we found corroborating evidence among the discovered paraphrases for many syntactic variables that have previously been attested in Dutch, including complementizer variation, existential er-variation, word order phenomena, and inflection variation. Crucially, we also discovered a number of alternations we had not anticipated as interesting variables. In order to detect national constraints on the newly found variables, we carried out a second experiment with a smaller corpus of Belgian and Netherlandic subtitles: the two variables we investigated in this light - deictic strength variation and subordination variation - did indeed manifest national sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper brings a cross-cultural analysis of opening and closing rituals and routines in Dutch and Flemish tourist offices, from a Politeness Theory perspective. On the basis of a corpus of 200 interactions it reveals, apart from some general comparable tendencies, quite different communicative habits in both neighbouring regions. The differences point in the direction of more formal institutional interactions in the Flemish tourist offices in comparison with the Dutch interactions. More specifically, Dutch interactions appear to be less formal, show a higher level of freedom with respect to the organisation of the opening and closing sequences and attach more importance to the relational work between the speech participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While most early research on so-called Poldernederlands 'Polder Dutch' (Van Bezooijen 1999; Van Bezooijen & Van den Berg 2001) finds differences in perceptions between this supposedly substandard variety and Standard Dutch, this paper aims to demonstrate that present-day language users do not distinguish between the two varieties (anymore). Two combined matchedguise experiments show that non-linguists are unable to name the variety and that they do not score them differently on a large number of evaluative scales. The results suggest the end of Polder Dutch as a perceptually separate variety, and the absorption of its most marked feature, viz. the lowering of /ei/ to /ai/ into Standard Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to shed light on article omission in Moroccan Flavored Dutch (MFD), a language variety in which Moroccan linguistic material (mainly Berber and Arabic) is combined with Dutch. It is well-known that MFD speakers are often inclined to omit articles in nominal phrases, and by doing so expressions contain so-called bare nouns (nominals without articles, i.e. definite or indefinite articles). This raises the question what triggers article omission in MFD. This study focuses on Dutch expressions that are embedded in MFD discourse and provides an innovative explanation for bare noun constructions. In particular, we argue that article omission in MFD is the result of an interplay between identity marking (article omission indexes the belonging to an ethnic subgroup in contrast to outsiders) and information structure. We show that there is a correlation between the syntactic position of a constituent and the type of article (i.e. definite or indefinite) that is omitted. The direct object position yields an indefinite, discourse-new interpretation of the bare nominal phrase. Since the neutral surface order of a Dutch main clause is subject-initial, the direct object position is canonically a focus position that is associated with new information. Therefore, the information structure of Dutch clauses seems to be a trigger for article omission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question how salience, i.e. the perceptual and cognitive prominence of language features (Kerswill & Williams 2002:63), can be studied and explained. Within language change studies, the concept of salience is often called upon to explain why certain language features are more prone to change than others, but empirical data to substantiate claims of salience are often lacking or non-convincing. In this paper, an overview is offered of ways in which salience can be studied empirically, building on the insights of recent perceptual dialectological research. It will be argued that a combination of techniques should be strived at, as this allows to combine the strengths of each approach. Subsequently, by offering an overview of existing hypotheses, the question will be addressed how salience can be explained. The formulated insights will be illustrated and tested by means of a multi-methodological salience experiment conducted in Flanders. This case study clearly shows (1) the advantage of an approach combining dialect imitation data and several types of interview data and (2) that salience is influenced by a variety of factors, such as the linguistic background of the listener and the context in which the feature occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an explorative sociophonetic study of the phoneme /s/ in the Dutch language area. Our aim is to investigate the regional variation in the realisation of this phoneme, and to test experimentally the observation of Collins & Mees (2003) that /s/ is sometimes pronounced more like [J], especially in the Randstad area (called s-retraction). One hundred native speakers of Dutch produced nineteen monosyllabic words containing /s/ in different syllabic contexts. The speakers were born and raised in one of five regions of the Dutch language area (West Flanders, Flemish Brabant, Netherlands Limburg, South Holland and Groningen). Spectral centre of gravity (CoG) and duration were used to measure the degree of s-retraction. CoG values turned out to be significantly lower (consistent with more retraction) in the regions in The Netherlands than in the Flemish regions. Speakers from South Holland produced significantly shorter /s/ than the other speakers. In conclusion, /s/ shows patterns of regional variation that are not fully in line with the observation forwarded by Collins & Mees (2003). The difference between the Flemish and Dutch regions shows that s-retraction is found in an area larger than the Randstad, possibly pointing towards a North-South pattern of variation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a closer collaboration between Dutch dialect syntax research on the one hand and the synchronic study of Standard Dutch grammar on the other. The central claim is that a thorough grasp of morphosyntactic variation in Dutch dialects can substantially enrich both the description and the analysis of Standard Dutch sentence structure. Three case studies are presented in support of this claim: Infinitivus pro Participio (IPP), the clausal template, and word order variation in verb clusters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades there has been a debate about the question whether a simple clause can contain more than one prepositional object. In this paper, I argue that the underlying grammatical model plays a decisive role in opting for either one or two prepositional objects, as becomes clear in the discussion between Vandeweghe and Broekhuis. Moreover, following Vandeweghe, I claim that simple clauses indeed can contain two prepositional objects if the relationship of each of the two objects to the predicate is different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the results of a perceptions and attitudes study in the West-Flemish town Tielt are reported. Twenty teenagers were subjected to an interview, to gain insight in the way they evaluate intralingual language variation in Flanders and how they judge on the situational appropriateness of this variation. These interviews were analysed by means of a qualitative discourse-based approach. The results show that Standard Dutch is still the superior variety to these teenagers (even though they are not that competent in it), and it is pre-eminently appropriate for more formal situations, which points to the existence of a standard language ideology. At the same time, Standard Dutch is considered an ideal which is hardly ever achieved, and a variety which is unsuitable for everyday informal situations. Tussentaal (lit. 'inbetween language'), on the other hand, is the adolescents' default language, and is appropriate for everyday situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the expression of emotional involvement in informal computer-mediated communication (CMC). While related research is quite fragmentary through its exclusive focus on a limited number of expressive markers or the inclusion of just one independent variable, the present study includes a wide range of expressive markers and three independent variables. The data reveal strikingly consistent age and gender correlates across all expressive markers and a strong correlation between the preferences of younger adolescents and girls. Furthermore, the study highlights a major impact of medium type. It calls for a refinement of the operationalization of the variable medium, as apart from its inherent characteristics (private/public, synchronous/asynchronous), the nature and goal of the interaction (which is also partly related to the type of social media that people use) trigger specific linguistic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper discusses the VP-topicalization and the mirror effect. According to the Syntax of Dutch (Broekhuis & Corver 2016), these two tests can make a reliable, non-intuitive distinction between the postfield and the afterthought, as well as between the middle field and the postfield, which is often not noticeable in main clauses with only a finite verb. Although these tests seem valuable indeed, even to non-generative studies, there are also some limitations, and especially for prepositional phrases (PPs) which can be either placed in the middle field or in the postfield. Furthermore, this paper also aims at refining the motivations of extraposition, and more particularly extraposition of PPs. We therefore rely on empirical corpus-based research, which can fine-tune the theoretical framework of extraposition in the Syntax of Dutch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dutch is known for its large inventory of discourse particles. Discourse particles are very frequent and highly important in conversation. Yet, not much research has been conducted on how children acquire them. In this paper we focus on the acquisition of the Dutch discourse particle wel. In earlier work, it was argued that despite the apparent diversity of the different uses of the particle wel, it has a core meaning, namely that it functions as a denial of an implicit or explicit negation in the context. In this paper we show that this core meaning is also reflected in the acquisition pattern of wel by Dutch children. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the occurrences of wel are not used as a response to an explicit negation, children seem to acquire wel as the positive counterpart of niet 'not'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]